Scratch@MIT Conference

Wow, where did that summer go?!

Welcome back to the new school year. As ever this year looks to be a series of exciting challenges, just one of which is to spend more time blogging. The advent of Twitter has certainly cut down on my blogging but I'm determined to get back into it this year and help keep our community informed, as well as putting the world of education technology to rights too!

Last week's prep week wasn't quite as productive as I'd hoped largely due to the fact I was late to return after attending the Scratch@MIT event in Boston.

Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is pretty much at the pinnacle of academic technologies and is consistently ranked within the top five universities in the world. Attending a conference at MIT's Media Lab was a great thrill. The Institute has been responsible for LOGO and Scratch, two technologies I have used in schools a huge amount. Indeed, my first experience with LOGO was as a trainee teacher in 1986!

The four day conference gave me the opportunity to look at how others have implemented Scratch within their environments and to receive new ideas about ways in which it could be used in the future. We have been using Scratch since it was first released, initially in our Computer Club, but then within the technology curriculum. On Friday morning I contributed to a presentation looking at ways in which the technology can be moved into the Mathematics curriculum. It seemed to be well received, which was a bonus!

Below is a video put together by the amazing team that were recording the conference.

There were plenty of 'takeaways' from this conference, not least the reassurance that we are on the right track with our use of Scratch. We now need to look at implementing the program within different contexts throughout the school, not just the Mathematics or Technology curriculum. Areas such as language teaching and digital storytelling can also benefit and we need to pursue these this year.

There were a large number of international delegates present from outside the USA and a number of possible future projects were discussed.

Attendance at the conference strengthened my view that Scratch is the best piece of free software that schools can use. In fact, it may just be the best piece of software for education full stop.

Parents often ask me about software they can install at home that will help to develop their children. Well, the simplest answer is Scratch. It hits a number of areas, but crucially can aid problem solving and creative development.

Scratch can be downloaded (at no cost!) here.

Year 7 Scratch

Both Year 6 and 7 have continued to look at the programming language Scratch in the last three weeks. Whilst P6 have begun to look at controlling images of themselves within the Scratch environment, the Year 7s have been considering aspects of computer game design whilst creating simple games that could be played by younger students.

A number of the games are very playable and include important aspects of game design, such as scoring, timers, levels and targets. The study of Scratch not only helps students to understand aspects of Control Technology, it also encourages review and refinement as well as offering a relatively simple path into the world of programming.

Hopefully a few of the games will be available for playing shortly.

Scratching Around

P6 students have begun to use Scratch in their ICT lessons. This brilliant piece of software from MIT is a great learning tool, allowing access to theories of programming as well as creativity.

We have been looking at different ways of learning the software, either progressing through a series of tutorials provided by Learnscratch.org or simply playing with the software and trying things out. Interestingly the results varied between classes with those set the task of investigating through play appearing to have a better understanding of the software than those who were working through the tutorials.

Learn more about this project

However, the tutorials do contain some excellent ideas for extended projects which we will be visiting in the next few weeks.

Scratch is an extremely engaging piece of software, students quickly become immersed in the intricacies and require little in the way of support from the teacher and are at ease with methods of self-support or helping each other out;

"How do you get rid of what you've drawn?"

"Right there."

Another great aspect of Scratch is that it's completely free and downloadable from the MIT website. It's a must have download for all students at the top of KS2 and up (or maybe even younger)

You can download Scratch here.

For those digital immigrants who like me require the security blanket of organised tutorials, LearnScratch is a great place to start.

Scratch

Earlier this year Computer Club had a go at exploring Scratch, a control type programming language that extends upon work started earlier in LOGO and even earlier with Bee Bots.

Now Year 7 are beginning to investigate how the program works, using video tutorials to help them understand the different functions.

One of the great things about Scratch is that it's completely free to use. You can download a copy of the program here.